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Ghanaian Serving On US National Cancer Advisory Board Calls For More Research To Be Done Into How Cancer Affects Blacks

Dr Ali-osman
A US based Ghanaian professor, Dr Francis Ali-Osman, is calling for more research to be carried out on cancer in Ghana, a disease which he says is killing a lot of people locally undetected.
Dr Ali-Osman was speaking to the Daily Graphic after he was handed a rare honour by US President Barack Obama with his appointment to the US National Cancer Advisory Board.
The Board advises the President, his Secretary of Health and Human Service and the Director of the National Cancer Institute on issues relating to the US’ national cancer programme.
Currently a Professor of Neuro-Oncology Research at the Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina, Dr Ali-Osman said the illness has to be studied at the local level to find out how it affects us Blacks, rather than simply relying on treatments based on research carried out on foreigners. He said this is necessary due to the genetic nature of the disease.
“Although the disease is the same, it differs in race by the genes, but most of the medicines are for the White race and so we have to start studying our race, which is the Black race of the disease, to get effective treatment,” he said.
He said he has started work with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), and that a cancer research program would be established to deeply study the illnes.
“Currently, we are working to get partners from the US, so that a state-of-the-art cancer research centre will be built in Ghana to serve the West African sub-region,” he added.
“If President Obama was able to appoint me as a member of the US National Cancer Advisory Board, then I believe I have a lot to offer,”
Dr Ali-Osman is an old boy of the Navrongo Senior High School and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, where he studied Pharmacy. Aside his work at Duke, he has also served as Director of Brain Tumour Research at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Senior Investigator and Chief Scientific Officer at the Hipple Cancer Research Centre at the Wright State University School of Medicine.



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